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After what seemed like an insanely long Summer, tomorrow, the Canadiens will be back to work, fielding questions from the media as it will be the team’s traditional golf tournament. If last season is anything to go buy, that’s when we’ll find out who will get the “A… left vacant by the Joel Edmundson trade. I know some fans would like to see Cole Caufield get it, but if I had my say, it would be put on Mike Matheson’s jersey. The blueliner had a career season last year and proved how useful he can be to this team, on top of being a big brother for the Canadiens’ young defense corps.
Although the Habs will attend tomorrow’s tournament, their camp won’t open this week as the spotlight will only be on the team’s rookies who will undergo physical testing at the team’s training complex in Brossard before flying off to Buffalo for the prospects challenge on Thursday. In this round robin tournament, each team will play three games. The Canadiens’ hopefuls will be taking on the Sabres Friday at 7.00 p.m., the Bruins Saturday at 3:30 p.m. and the Senators on Monday at 1:30 p.m.
The team released the roster for the rookie camp on Friday and the list is far shorter than it’s been in recent years with only three players attending on a tryout basis. As always, NCAA players are not allowed to take part in a professional training camp, so you won’t be seeing the likes of Lane Hutson or newly drafted goaltender Jacob Fowler. However, Ty Smilanic has decided not to return to the University of Wisconsin and to turn pro instead, which explains his presence.
All eyes will probably be on the team’s latest first pick David Reinbacher as he’ll be playing his first games as a Montreal Canadiens. The social media outrage at the Canadiens for electing to pick the Austrian defenseman over the gifted forward Matvei Michkov has strangely died down since the young Russian has been scratched for three of his team’s first four games in the KHL. He only dressed up for a single game in which he saw just over six minutes of ice-time. It wouldn’t be the first time a Russian team doesn’t put the development of a youngster who’s decided to go play in the NHL one day at the forefront. This was one of the reasons why I didn’t want to see the Canadiens play Russian roulette at the draft.
Reinbacher won’t be the only blue liner to make his debut since Logan Mailloux will also be playing his first game. The 2021 first pick was injured last year and couldn’t take part in the prospect challenge. Now that he’s got the green light from Gary Bettman to play for Montreal in the NHL, the big defenseman will be out to show why Marc Bergevin and co. decided to ignore his plea not to be drafted in 2021 despite the events in which he was involved in Sweden during the pandemic.
Up front, Owen Beck and Emil Heineman will be amongst the most interesting players to watch as they performed above expectations at the last training camp. Sean Farrell, who got a taste of the NHL at the end of the last season will be starting his first full professional season, just like Joshua Roy and they should both be important cogs for the Rocket in Laval.
Tomorrow night, as a close to the team’s golf tournament, the Canadiens will be hosting a virtual roundtable featuring Kent Hughes, Martin St-Louis and a few players. The exact starting time is unknown right now but it will announced tomorrow on the team’s social media. The event will be broadcasted online and available for all to see, don’t expect anything groundbreaking to come out of that though, but if you’ve suffered of hockey withdrawal enough, it will be a good way to ease yourself back in.
Canadiens rookie camp opens on September 13.#GoHabsGohttps://t.co/v5YvtmetvG
— Canadiens Montréal (@CanadiensMTL) September 8, 2023